Page 5 of His to Worship

- sedona -

“I can’t take this anymore!” I jump at the sudden exclamation. Peering around Sabrina and Renata who are both staring at the source of commotion as well. “Let me OUT OF HERE!! I want OUT!”

Amari screams and thrashes, a feat that is incredibly difficult considering her wrists are completely immobilized. It takes a second for the remaining four bug things to take notice. We’d ended up with one of the tech dude and three soldiers. Not terrible odds, but not great considering they have three guns to our none. When she lets out a banshee-level wail, though, they certainly must feel the vibrations of that, and they all turn their bulbous yellow eyes on her.

Her hysteria rises as the bugs, caught off guard by her sudden outburst, rush towards her, attempting to subdue her. They try prodding her with their guns and clacking roughly at her, but her wails just intensify, and I have to wonder if some of it is real.

“I said let me OUT! I can’t do this! I want to go home! I want to go HOME!”

Finally realizing none of their attempts to calm her are working, one of them walks to the wall and presses a button. Amari’s portion of the strip lights red and her arms fall. She braces herself on her knees, her cuffs still holding her hindered, but not enough to stop her from springing forward. Knocking the smallest unarmed mantis to the side, she makes just enough room in their huddle to wiggle her small body through the space and to the control panel. She slams her hand into it, in the same space they had just hit. With a hiss, all of our cuffed wrists drop.

With the handcuffs still intact, my range of motion is not great, but it’s better than being stuck upright to a wall. Wasting no time, Renata jumps into action and grabs the gun from one of the mantises. Before I can blink, she’s shot one right in the chest.

“Not my first time.” She gives me a cold smile and heads over to help Amari handle the tech guy.

I don't bother waiting to see what happens next. Instead, I rush into the fray, jumping onto the back of one of the mantises as it lifts its gun to shoot. It startles and begins swinging its body and clawing at me to get off. I hang on for dear life, clutching its body to mine like a baby sloth while simultaneously pushing my thumbs into its large yellow eyes. The feeling is disgusting as my thumbs crunch and squish through the eye tissue. I push down a wretch as it lets out a pained, gargled sound. Looking up, I see exactly who I need.

“Sabrina!” I grab her attention, and she reads my mind.

With the guard blind and disoriented, Sabrina yanks the gun from its hand and shoots it twice. First in the foot, and when I drop off his back and out of the way, she aims and headshots him. Goopy, purple blood spurts over my face, and I blink blankly at her for a moment.

“Sabrina!” Renata screams in warning, and both of our heads snap up as we see the final guard raising its gun to aim right at her. Renata takes off running towards it, her gun apparently lost in the scuffle with the other two. It all seems to happen in slow motion. The shot is fired before Sabrina or I can react, but Amari is close enough to shove the guard to the side just in time. The bullet goes astray, barely missing Sabrina’s shoulder.

With the aggression of a woman in a terrifying situation, Renata bum-rushes the final mantis. They crash to the floor and its gun goes scattering across the room. She grabs the mantis by the head and slams it back over and over. With sickening smacks and a horrifying squelch, its brains squirt out like the squished bug it is, and its eyes finally go dark.

I let out a breath as I look around at the collateral damage. Every mantis in the room is dark in the eyes, or missing a head altogether in the case of one. I give a shiver at the thought and repress that particular memory. Wiping the goop from my face, I look around at the girls.

“Oh my god, you guys, we actually did it.” One by one that realization dawns on each of them and we all share a triumphant smile.

“Now to get these cuffs off,” Sabrina adds, looking between us and the cuffs on her wrists.

“I have an idea!” Amari walks over to one of the dead mantises. Lifting its arm with a grimace of disgust, she maneuvers until she aligns its finger with the center of her handcuffs. A second later, a circle in the middle glows blue before the cuffs fall to the ground with a hiss.

“Oh, they’re finger-printed! Good catch, Amari.” I mean the compliment genuinely. Between her incredible performance to kick off the plan and this, she’s starting to make up for the hours of never-ending crying. Soon after, we are all free and standing around facing each other.

“Okay,” I announce, giving everyone a small smile, “let’s look at the control console and see what we can do.”

We all walk to the large tech island in the middle of the floor. As we circle it, we pause, staring hard.

Sabrina’s the first to speak, “Um, has it—”

”—been shot? Yup.” Renata looks at the thing in distress.

As we stand there, catching our breath, a sinking feeling settles in my stomach. We've escaped our captors, but now we're adrift in space, with no hope of rescue. And as the ship hurtles further into the unknown, I can't help but wonder if we've traded one form of captivity for another.

“Okay, well, everybody stay calm,” I instruct, pulling my eyes from the smoking hole of what might have been our last hope. “We need to figure out if the ship is moving first.”

Renata leans over the control panel, looking at the buttons that are still intact and the parts of the screen not inked over with black. She pauses for a second, staring at the gibberish on the screens below us. Each symbol on the screen looks like various combinations of lines, circles, and dots with no true meaning.

“And we need to find a way to read it.” Renata pushes away from the panel with that addition and begins walking around the room, looking for something to help us.

“True, it's not like it’ll just up and talk to us in English,” Sabrina adds sarcastically.

Her words strike a chord and a thought hits me. I cock my head for a second before I open my mouth to speak, looking up toward the ceiling.

“Computer, do you speak English?”

“ALTERNATIVE LANGUAGE DETECTED: HUMAN VERNACULAR ENGLISH. WOULD YOU LIKE TO CONTINUE IN THE DETECTED LANGUAGE?”

---